How fit and healthy do you need to be to play snooker? The great thing about snooker is almost anyone can pick up a cue and knock the balls about, and in a social setting that might be all that’s required to have fun. However, if you’re looking to improve your game, it can pay to look at your health and fitness as well as your technique. Why? Maintaining a healthy mind and body will improve your energy levels, allowing you to play at your best for longer and delaying burnout, as well as increasing your flexibility and protecting your body against injuries such as pain in the neck and lower back.
Player Testimonies about Health and Fitness for Snooker
For many years now, an increasing number of players have spoken publicly to advocate health and fitness for the benefit of their game and their welfare.
In an article written for BBC Sport, in 2003 Peter Ebdon attributed his 2002 World Championship win to staying fit and being focused. He said how important it was to be ‘properly prepared and feeling good in yourself’. Peter revealed that he was a keen swimmer who swam up to a mile a day ahead of the previous year’s World Championship. His diet also contributed to his success, as he said he cut down on the amount of carbohydrates he consumed ‘by eating less bread, pasta and rice and all the sugary foods’. In his words, he wanted to be ‘lean and mean’ for the tournament. He said such fitness levels were imperative when preparing for a tournament that last for two weeks as ‘the long-frame matches can take a lot out of you’. He observed that if you become mentally tired, you become physically tired, and that works the other way round too. He compared snooker to other sports, where players were getting fitter all the time and all the top players were also the fittest. Lastly, he pointed out that to perform at the top level you also must be at your best psychologically.
Ronnie O’Sullivan was long known as an advocate of running as a means for improving his wellbeing, however found a change in his diet (through working with nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert) resulted in a marked improvement in his game. In an interview with Betway Insider during the lead up to the 2018 UK Championship, he admitted that while he believed he was playing ‘well enough’, he found that he was ‘running out of steam’ in his matches. He said he was getting tired because he was eating ‘bad food’. A change in his diet left him convinced that he was now getting 100% out of himself, rather than only extracting 85% previously. He said the upturn in his form, and increased number of title wins that year, was due to being able to see matches through to the end without starting to feel sleepy. With regards to exercise, Ronnie said at the time he did not believe that you needed to be physically fit to play snooker, as long as you were eating well, but he found running to be a good outlet for him, saying ‘I might as well get addicted to something that’s really good for me’.
More recently, Mark Allen underwent a significant physical change by losing four stones in the close season of 2022. In an interview with Eurosport, he described the story. It was actually after an hour-long conversation in a hotel room with Ronnie O’Sullivan that he dedicated himself to improving his health. He said even if it did not improve his snooker, it would help his mindset off the table, making him a better person around his family. With new priorities, he worked hard on his diet, vigilantly watching what he was eating and cutting down his portions. This required him to retrain his brain to think differently about eating. He said the going through the process had been tough and a lot harder than he thought it would be, but he knew it was something he had to do. It clearly worked for his snooker, as that season he went on to win the UK Championship, two further ranking titles, and reached the semi-final of the World Championship.
A short while earlier than Allen’s interview, Shaun Murphy had spoken to Eurosport about his own actions to improve his health. Shaun had lost and gained weight throughout his career, but after years of yo-yo dieting, he accepted he was unable to get on top of his weight. A combination of this, the abuse he was receiving on social media because of it, and other problems arising in his personal life, led him to struggle making snooker a priority. He had been listening to Steve Davis at that year’s World Championship when Davis said that it was no secret that the sport was being dominated by the fitter players who had been looking after themselves. He took the huge decision to have surgery which removed 80% of his stomach, meaning that he can now only eat very little. He believed that he needed to do something regarding his weight to ensure he had the best possible chance of making a success of the last third of his career. Although at that time Murphy said he still had some way to go, he wanted to ‘enjoy his snooker and feel good about himself’.
Speaking to Eurosport ahead of the 2011 World Championship, Mark Selby said he would be doing a lot of running in the weeks leading up to the tournament. He had a treadmill at home and planned to run around the roads local to where he lived. He said nothing compares to the World Championship as a physical test, having reached the semi-finals the previous year feeling drained and empty.
In 2021 John Higgins revealed to Eurosport a dramatic transformation he lost nearly 4 stones after taking part in spin classes 3 to 4 times a week. He said he was doing it for his whole wellbeing and to look well for his wife and kids. He said he had put on weight so gradually he did not clock the increase in his size as he was putting more on. He did not believe the weight loss was helping him pot more balls but it was helping him feel better about himself. He foresaw that one challenge in keeping up his routine was to find venues for spin classes while on tour, but he was aware that many other players were into running for their fitness.
After winning the UK Championship in 2013, Neil Robertson said to the Daily Mail that he had installed a gym in his home due to his belief that you needed to be slim to optimise your snooker. He said in the years previously he had bulked up, gaining 5-6kg in muscle, but the larger size of his body changed the way he was cueing the ball. He believed a similar bulking up by Judd Trump had affected his game also at that time. Robertson believed the most important aspect of snooker was the cueing and having the stamina, so he was no longer doing weight training and instead focused on cardio and core strength exercises. He believed he was too lazy to implement a training regime himself but was intent on hiring a personal trainer to come to his home 4 times a week to help him get into shape. He believed the players that were winning tournaments at that time were the slimmer players on tour. In the 2013-14 season, Robertson became the first player to score more than 100 centuries in a single season.
Conclusion
From this selection of player’s testimonies, some players believe their health and fitness directly impacts their snooker, while others are less certain exercise makes a difference to their ability to pot balls but do advocate it for their overall health, wellbeing, and relationships. Of course, physical health is only one side of the coin – you need to be in good mental shape to improve your snooker too. Given the importance of being in a good place psychologically to enjoy your snooker, improving your health and fitness to lift your sense of wellbeing can only help here too.
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